23 comments for “Beyond The Wall – Season 2 – Episode 10”

Ah here it is, big thanks from the UK guys! Been a great addition to the show all season. Be listening to it soon!

patman

July 18, 2012 at 9:43 am

Whoa, a heated Beyond the Wall! Downloading now, will listen on way to work and back. Thanks for getting the episode available!

patman

July 18, 2012 at 11:04 pm

Hmmm, there are a lot of points of contention. I'll have to think on this and weigh in.

Soon…

patman

July 19, 2012 at 1:51 am

Everyone had a lot of great discussion points on this podcast. I'll add some of my own opinions, for what they are worth.

I do like Shae a lot better now. I did prefer Shae in the books though, but that's largely because when I read them, I mentally cast a girl that I knew in High School in the role of Shae. That's all I'm saying on that.

I like that Chooch is thinking about Bronn. I do like me that singing sell-sword.

Going in to the House of the Undying, regardless of how I felt about Dany's arc in getting there, I enjoyed the TV presentation. Had they gone the trippy vision-quest from the books, it would have been very messy. Predictions and prophecies can still be uttered next season by someone else who was introduced this season.

I'm just not getting hung up on Robb and Doctor Queen of the North.

I think I'm siding with Christiana on the Qhorin/Jon scene. Because we can't get into Jon's head, and we can't have Jon narrate to us what's happening, the TV show is just going to make some missteps in how things are presented. Viewers are going to walk away with different impressions, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I will not be shocked if Jon gets all EMO about killing Qhorin, but I'll also not be shocked if Jon at some point explicitly states that he knew what Qhorin was doing, and was waiting for the right amount of provocation to sell it to the Wildlings.

I have 15 minutes more to listen to, I'm keen to hear the reactions to the Others and their shambling dead.

patman

July 19, 2012 at 4:31 pm

I'm done listening, ready to comment some more. First off, you guys really put in a detailed summation and analysis of the episode, and thumbs up to Chooch for his predictions about the possibility of Valar Morghulis being Jaqen's name, or Benjen being Mance (I am not confirming or denying those statements, I just applaud and encourage such predictions.)

By the way, "dracarys" is not a dragon's name, from the books it's just High Valyrian for "fire". Near the midpoint of the season, we saw Dany training Drogon to singe meat on command, and she was using the word as a prompt. In the books, it's explicitly clear that Dany is using a non-common tongue, non-Dothraki language word to train the dragons, so they wouldn't set fire to things accidentally. So your consensus of it meaning "set the bald dude on fire" was pretty close.

I was thinking about the House of the Undying stuff from the books. PG brought up betrayals, and by the end of book two, Dany had a prediction of a certain number of betrayals that she would suffer. I think that the reason we haven't had that is she's already had betrayals that weren't in the books, and so they'll probably not adhere too close to the plot point of Dany obsessing over any future betrayals.

Dany's story in Qarth was substantially altered in the show, but if they had been too faithful to the book, it would have been pretty uneventful. Qarth was like a long luxurious summer camp for Dany in the books.

I think the pinnacle of the episode was Jaqen and Arya's interactions. Jaqen is such a cool character, and the actor played him very well. Jaqen, before leaving Arya, tells her that a Man has Duties to perform (or words to those effect.) I can only imagine that viewers would be wanting to know more of what those duties entail.

Last thoughts on the final scene, with Sam witnessing the march of the dead, being shepherded along toward the Fist of the First Men by the Others aka White Walkers (on zombie horseback.) I'll have to watch the episode again to see the chained undead, that was a good catch.

I really liked the look of the one blue-eyed Other that locked eyes with Sam. I've heard it described as kind of looking like a Yeti, it certainly had that cool Wendigo look about it. I wasn't really happy with the implication that it saw Sam but ignored him. I'm not sure what the show creators were trying to communicate with that. I would have rather that Sam had just been a witness, and had not been witnessed.

Logistically, the three horn blasts was kind of unusual. Sam, Gren, and Edd are some distance from the Night Watch encampment, but appear to be closest to the approaching enemy. The White Walkers (on zombie horseback… another reason to call them Others) and their walking wights appear to be obscured by wintry mists, so I'm not sure how visible they'd be from the Fist.

Also, and this kind of irritated me this season, it seemed like Sam was the only one that knew that 3 blasts were for the Supernatural Menaces ™ that the Night's Watch were really there to serve against. Luckily, the guy on horn duty had been briefed by Sam, but I wonder what the other Night's Watch guys would be thinking. Three Blasts? What's that? If only we brothers had been briefed on what three blasts mean!

Yes, yes, I know we needed Sam to say stuff that everyone knows so we viewers would know too, but it was just something that was bugging me.

kevinpickles

July 31, 2012 at 11:25 am

good job. thanks

Teylen

August 14, 2012 at 9:42 pm

Great Podcast thanks 🙂
Is there a possibilty to do an abo of the thing? Like get a mail for everything new that you post?
Cause I kinda missed the episode by weeks ^^;

Just some thoughts on the episode itself.
About Ross even without having read the book am completely in the dark why Varys thinks she's fit to be some kind of ingenious spy. She has no special wits so far, maybe I just haven't noticed, she doesn't seem to have a good view on "who's who" – she even took quite some time to realize who Varys is -, she's even not so good at being a whore. According to the lecture stuff and all those issues at the brothel and there are better looking women around. She even somehow managed to get kicked out of Cerseis dungeon. My guess was for unimportance. Plus thanks to the Ross/Shae confusion she's well known at least to Cersei.
Am looking forward to see which plan Varys has.

And regarding to plans, am even more curious about Catelyns idea of Briennes travel to the south.
It strikes me as either a tremendous outright stupid idea or a suicide mission.
On the one hand Brienne, as much as I like the character, is not really ordinary. More like a a giant extraordinary warrior women, wandering around with no obvious lord. On the other hand I took it that Jaime the Kingsslayer is, for better or worse, something like top 1 of Westeros List of most hated/most admired/sexy celebrities. So they are somehow on their way south, more or less through the front lines right to Kings Landing which is like swarming with Lannisters.
Somehow I came to fear for Briennes safety @.@
Maybe they will think of something better for the next patrol / people they pass. Some names, some convincing Backstory and maybe some disguise for Jaime (maybe if she'll cut down all his nice blond hair he wouldn't be as recognizable).
And am wondering how they actually plan to hand him over "Hello, that's your beloved brother. I release him if you give me Sansa, if not, uh, you wouldn't come to the idea to use those gold cloaks and red cloaks and stuff on me? That would be most dishonorable Cersei? Oh and I did so not kill the ex-husband of your beloved wife Joffrey! … No of course it hasn't been the Others, It's been a big strange shadowbabything"

As a smaller side comment, I wondered what Melissandre was referring to when she mentioned that Stannis will lose everything, more then he already has. Hum, as far as I got it from the show Stannis didn't got a lot if anything left?

Anyway thanks again for the nice Podcast.:)

patman

August 16, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Great post, Teylen!

In regards to Varys and Ros: I think Varys was simply recruiting Ros to be in his spy network. She's one of Baelish's ladies, and Baelish is someone he'd like to spy on, she was abused and threatened by Cersei (and Joffrey) so she's not likely to spy on Varys for them… in the books we know Varys just has a lot of people working for him, and since the show producers just love having Ros doing stuff, she's being promoted to more involvement. I don't think Varys is working on anything deeper than that.

In regards to Brienne and Jaime: I think we all agree that Catelyn's decision to send Brienne to exchange Jaime for Sansa (and Arya, which is not an option) is sub-optimal. But it's not as crazy as it might sound. It's a bit more evident in the books, but fulfilling obligations and stated contracts is a practice that is followed.

It might not have been established in the show, but in the books Tyrion as Hand charged a Lannister envoy (Cleos Frey) to offer to the Starks an exchange of the Stark girls for Jaime. Brienne is in more danger from the Stark followers than from Lannisters, if she strolled up to a Lannister patrol and offered Jaime over, the crown would have an obligation to turn over Sansa. Doesn't mean that they will, doesn't mean that they won't kill Brienne on the spot, but it also doesn't mean that they wouldn't treat Brienne as an envoy either.

It would suck to be a Lannister who killed an envoy that the higher ups might not want killed. The crown already has a PR problem.

Also, it would be sufficient for Brienne to get Jaime out of Stark-held territory to a lord's territory that was faithful to the crown but not necessarily unsympathetic to the Starks. An impartial observer who knew about the hostage exchange offer from Catelyn would go a long way in seeing it happen.

Brienne might be called into account for Renly's death. In the show, Loras stated that he didn't believe Brienne was guilty, and Margaery didn't seem that worked up overall.

Glad to have this discussion!

patman

August 24, 2012 at 1:24 am

Any idea when we might hear the feedback podcast? I hesitate to bring that up, since I don't want to seem to be nagging. And since it's well known the GRRM threatens to kill a Stark everytime anyone asks when the next book is coming out, I'm hesitant to ask when a new BTW podcast might come out, for fear that PG will call up GRRM and ask when that next book is coming out…

Nuchtchas

August 24, 2012 at 3:04 am

ACK! that's a scary threat, but don't worry, PG is a Stark man, though e may threaten to kill off a host every time someone asks about the next episode…. you know since we have hosts to spare.

pgholyfield

August 24, 2012 at 2:12 am

I will attempt to finish it up this weekend. I'd like to, especially since next week is Dragon*Con and we have those pesky Parsec Awards to attend. 🙂

patman

September 4, 2012 at 12:37 am

Hah! Dragon*Con is now over!

But I guess a period of recuperation is in order.

Very well, carry on.

Chooch Schubert

September 5, 2012 at 1:24 am

And Jason Momoa sends his regards 😉

patman

September 5, 2012 at 9:58 pm

DROGO LIVES?!?!?!?!?!?!!!

patman

August 24, 2012 at 3:01 am

Best wishes on the parsec awards, and for everyone going to D*C, I hope a great time is had by all. I've been once, and I'd go again in a heartbeat.

Winter is coming, but so is NaNoWriMo. PG’s vowed to get the ep out, and he always delivers.

All my best to you and the Fantastic Fam, Pat!

patman

October 19, 2012 at 3:13 pm

Same to you, missy! The rest of the FF says hello!

pgholyfield

October 18, 2012 at 4:55 pm

It's on the list. Long list, though. I will dedicate some time tonight to at least see if I can get it out without much work. I mean, it takes two hours just to listen to it to see if there are problems. 🙂